Adventure
by glitterburn
Summary: Sahara. Al and Dirk ponder the greatest adventure of all.


**Adventure**

The dunes were crusted with white. He could see the shape of seashells: curved and worn smooth by the relentless pounding of the Atlantic, they now glimmered amongst the salt crystals left by the waves. It felt strange underfoot: the sand would seem solid and stable, and then the pressure would crack the swathe of white and it would crumble and mix into the dirty golden-grey that lay beneath it.

Al Giordano thought it looked like the sea. He'd spent a lot of time standing at the stern of a ship, watching the froth of their passing float over the blue of the ocean. In time it dissolved, the white becoming blue again. He'd always found that comforting: a daily reminder that, while life could get rough, it would always settle back on track in the end.

"Hey, Al! You got any spare change?"

Jerked out of his reverie, Al looked back over the dunes and saw Dirk coming towards him, surrounded by three children. Dressed in worn but clean clothing, they were circling around him, reaching up to tug at his sleeve or shirttails, their expressions hopeful. Dirk towered over them, but despite that – and the fact that he'd seen off enemies more dangerous than this - he still looked a little uncertain.

"_Donnez-moi! Donnez-moi!_" the children chanted, their smiles wide.

Al thought it was typical – but funny – that the kids had latched onto Dirk and not onto him. Everybody loved Dirk. Al was the guy in the background, the best friend that scarcely anybody noticed. But that suited Al just fine.

"C'mon, Al, help me out here," Dirk pleaded as he trudged up the dunes, the children still following him. "Just a couple of dollars?"

"Nope," Al lied. "Thought you were the one with the money tonight."

Dirk stared at him in mock surprise. "Oh, so it's my turn to buy dinner, is it?"

"Sure it is. It can't have slipped your mind that I provided the meals for the past nine hundred miles."

"I don't think I'd describe a dozen crates of freeze-dried beef stew as a 'meal'," Dirk said dryly. "You know, maybe once or twice, if we were in the middle of nowhere and really hungry, then I might call freeze-dried stew a 'meal', but after nine hundred miles of eating the same crap every night with not even a drop of ketchup to change the flavour – well. Your damn freeze-dried stew is not a 'meal', it's evil on a plate."

Al shrugged. "It was cheap. Got a real good deal on it when we left Morocco."

"Yeah. I wonder why."

"It had the UN flag on it and everything. That's a guarantee of quality."

Dirk rolled his eyes. "Al! Did it never occur to you to stop and question the origins of that stew?"

"That's easy. It came from the UN."

Dirk groaned and gave him a shove as he went past. "I know you've got money on you. Assuage your guilt at buying black market UN relief food and give these kids something."

"There's still some packets of stew on board ship, do you think…"

"No." Dirk's voice was stern, but with a thread of laughter running through it. "Give them a few dollars. At least then they can buy something good to eat."

Al sighed and hunted through his pockets.

The children clustered around him and grabbed at his hands as soon as he held out the small sheaf of crumpled bills. "_Merci! Merci, monsieur!_" they cried and ran off, squabbling amongst themselves.

Dirk chuckled as Al came to stand beside him on the ridge of the dune. "You always were a soft touch."

"Just following orders."

"Since when did you do anything that I said?" Dirk wondered with a grin.

"Oh… since about fourth grade," Al replied flippantly. "Anyway, we came out here looking for dinner, right? And since I've got no money, you're buying."

"All right, okay." Dirk held up his hands. "The fish market is further along the beach, or so the Admiral said. It's called the Plage des Pêcheurs – and I guess that must be the market up ahead."

Al followed the direction of Dirk's finger as he pointed to the far end of the strip of sand, where a large concrete building stood surrounded by trucks and vans. The green and yellow minibuses that they'd seen on the main street of Nouakchott had somehow made it out over the dusty track to the beach, together with the battered fleet of aging Mercedes' with shattered headlamps and broken fenders. A small sea of people heaved against the doors of the fish market. Their voices carried on the breeze, a mix of French and Arabic, plus another tongue that Al couldn't recognise.

"Is that the line?" Al asked.

"I don't think they know how to queue in Mauretania," Dirk said. "What do you want to do? Here's a plan: we can charge over there and grab the best-looking barracuda and drag it off before anybody stops us - or we can wait a while and see if the line gets any shorter."

"I guess we should wait," Al said. "Give the locals time to do their shopping first. It's only fair. And anyway, there's more fish coming in now. Look over there."

He nodded towards the fishing boats that had just come ashore further up the beach. Their curved, brightly painted hulls were wedged firmly into the soft sand at the shore, and the fishermen stood alongside, oblivious to the waves, as they unloaded their catch.

A group of teenaged boys grabbed the fish, piling them onto trays and then running down the beach towards the market. Al watched the first lad sprint past them. He recognised the sinuous form and toothy smile of a barracuda in amongst the red mullet and sea bass. His stomach rumbled slightly as another boy dashed by, laden down with a couple of swordfish. He imagined the fish gutted and cleaned and chopped into steaks, maybe grilled or perhaps seared, with a dash of hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon juice…

"Let's sit," said Dirk, lowering himself down onto the crusted sand.

Al sighed, looking wistfully after the swordfish, and then he followed suit. As he sat, he heard the crackle of the surface of the dune as it shifted under his weight. The sand smelled of dried seaweed, salt, and dying heat. It was a comfortable scent that he associated with days like these - days kicking around with Dirk, on the way to another job, another adventure. The calm before the storm.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, listening to the far-off shouts from the market and the tumble-hush of the surf on the beach. There was another sound, too – that of the waves beating against an iron hull.

Al watched Dirk's gaze return to the wreck of the freighter time and again as they sat there. It was a compelling sight. Smaller than their NUMA vessel, it was nevertheless larger than any of the Mauritanian fishing boats that they'd seen that day. Wedged tight into the sand, the freighter heeled gently to port, its bows towards them, still perfectly intact. It was a ghost-ship: a huge dark skeleton that haunted the beach, coated in rust and salt and despair, a warning to other ships to stand out from the shore or risk the same fate.

"I wonder what happened to the crew," Dirk said at last.

"They probably got out alive," Al said. "They ran aground. Easy thing to do around here. When we came ashore in the inflatable you saw for yourself the way the bottom shelves away real sudden. With the tides and the rip currents along here, the sand is always shifting. One minute you're in deep water with plenty of clearance, the next – boom! – you've run aground."

Dirk nodded distantly. "Yeah. It looks to be structurally sound, though. Wonder why they didn't get a tug and drag it back out to re-float it?"

"Don't know." Al leaned back on his elbows, feeling the crust of sand, salt and shells scratch at his skin. "Money, probably. And now it's too late. Look at the rust on it. It's like it was built that way."

Dirk was silent for a while, and then he said, "Do you ever feel like that?"

"What, rusty?" Al gave him an amused look.

"No. Like… like you've been washed up someplace. Like you've been shipwrecked, ground to a halt in the sand, and you know you should be re-floated, but you don't want to go. You don't know if you can go back into the water."

Al answered without having to think. "Yes."

"When?"

"All the time." He was careful not to look at Dirk. "I like my life. It's all one big adventure, and I like that. College, the Navy, NUMA… it's great. But once in a while, I'd like to be able to step off and see where I am. I don't mean just time out, because we get enough of that. I mean time to consider. To evaluate."

Dirk nodded. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

"Do you?" Al squinted at him dubiously. He'd never heard Dirk express uncertainty in such terms before. It made him seem more fragile than his tough-guy image would ever allow.

"Uh-huh." Dirk picked at the white crust on the dune, flaking off pieces of shell melded together with glittering salt crystals before he crumbled them into dust between his fingers.

He said, "It's what we're taught to do. Evaluate a situation and then make a decision. We did it all through the Navy, and we're still doing it now. I guess we'll always do it. But there are times when it'd be nice to switch off and not think. Not about anything, you know? Just to kick back and just… _be_, or to just _do_, without having to consider the consequences."

Al tilted his head to one side. "Like… now?"

Dirk smiled. "Yeah. Like now."

They looked at one another, aware only of that shared gaze. Nothing else was important. The sound of the waves on the beach, against the shipwreck, covered their heartbeats, their breathing.

Al broke the moment. "There are some people who'd never believe that an adventurer needs time out," he said. He picked up a pebble and flung it down the dune. It left an imprint in the salted sand before it came to a halt.

"For some people, adventure _is_ their time out," Dirk said in response. "In fact, for the longest time I thought I was one of those people. But what have I got to run from? It's not like I have any skeletons in my closet. And yet I kept on going from one job to the next…"

"Yeah. You'd always be so down when we finished a gig," Al remembered.

"You know what changed all that?" Dirk sat up straight and turned towards him, his gaze steady. "You did, Al. I realised that you were this great constant in my life, and you always had been."

Al blinked and looked at him in silence.

Dirk continued, his voice warm: "I'd never thought about it before. I guess I took you for granted. But the moment I stopped doing that, I felt… better. Settled. Less like a shipwreck and more like a boat on a slipway, ready to launch when the time's right."

"Well, I…" Al glanced down at the sand, embarrassed. "You know I'm not a natural adventurer," he admitted quietly.

Dirk raised his eyebrows. "Then why do you do it?"

Al was silent for a long time, and then he gathered his courage and said, "Because of you."

"Because of me…"

"Yeah." Al didn't feel like elaborating. He didn't think he needed to. They understood one another. They always had. They always would. But still – he had to say something.

"Dirk. Your… friendship - it's the biggest adventure of all."

Dirk looked at him for a moment, and then he nodded. He got to his feet, dusting himself down as he glanced towards the market. Then he smiled, and reached down a hand to help Al to his feet.

"C'mon. Let's see if there's any barracuda left for dinner."

**end**


End file.
